other. When we use our gifts together, we all benefit. If others
don’t use their gifts, you get cheated, and if you don’t use your
gifts, they get cheated. This is why we’re commanded to discover
and develop our spiritual gifts. Have you taken the time to
discover your spiritual gifts? An unopened gift is worthless.
Whenever we forget these basic truths about gifts, it always
causes trouble in the church. Two common problems are “gift-
envy”and “gift-projection.”The first occurs when we compare our
gifts with others’, feel dissatisfied
with what God gave us, and
become resentful or jealous of how
God uses others. The second
problem happens when we expect
everyone else to have our gifts, do
what we are called to do, and feel as
passionate about it as we do. The Bible says, “There are different
kinds of service in the church, but it is the same Lord we are
serving.”^10
Sometimes spiritual gifts are overemphasized to the neglect of
the other factors God uses to shape you for service. Your gifts
reveal one key to discovering God’s will for your ministry, but your
spiritual gifts are not the total picture. God has shaped you in four
other ways, too.
SHAPE: Listening to Your Heart
The Bible uses the term heartto describe the bundle of desires,
hopes, interests, ambitions, dreams, and affections you have. Your
heart represents the source of all your motivations—what you
love to do and what you care about most. Even today we still use
the word in this way when we say, “I love you with all my heart.”
The Bible says, “As a face is reflected in water, so the heart
reflects the person.”^11 Your heart reveals the real you—what you
truly are, not what others thinkyou are or what circumstances
force you to be. Your heart determines why you say the things
PURPOSE #4: You Were Shaped for Serving God 237
An unopened gift
is worthless.